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Fury Road runs on silent-era craft

By the PopJunk Serials desk. Published

Review details

Title
Mad Max: Fury Road
Year
2015
Where
Theatrical release, May 2015 (Warner Bros. internationally, Roadshow in Australia)
Covered
The film's documented production and reception record, and the director's own stated influences. Sourced analysis, not a viewing.
Verdict
A chase film built almost entirely for real, and the awards record says the method paid off. The craft is why it reads as well on the page now as it did on release.

Fury Road belongs to a tradition older than sound film, and its director says so himself. George Miller built the 2015 chase picture as "a silent movie with sound and music," conceived shot by shot, and he traces his whole approach to the silent era and to Buster Keaton, per an IndieWire interview. Miller wrote it with Brendan McCarthy and Nico Lathouris. Warner Bros. released it internationally and Roadshow in Australia, and it reached US theaters on May 15, 2015, running 120 minutes, per Wikipedia.

The method is a matinee method

Miller grew up on Saturday-matinee serials and comics in the Australian outback, and he has called that his invisible apprenticeship to filmmaking, per IndieWire. The lesson he took from the silent reel was simple. If the action reads with the sound off, it can only get better with sound. Fury Road is built to that rule. The story is human cargo running from a warlord, and a viewer is meant to grasp the whole stake without a line of exposition.

Almost none of it is faked

Miller has said roughly 90 percent of the film's effects were done practically, real vehicles moving at real speed in the Namibian desert, per Wikipedia. That is the stunt inheritance showing. The flame-throwing guitar on the Doof Wagon is a working rig, not a render, and the weight you feel in a crash is the weight of metal. It is the exact thing the matinee daredevils sold a theater a century ago, back before anyone could draw a stunt in a computer.

The chase is the structure

There is no second act to catch a breath in. Miller called the extended chase an almost pure form of film language, and the film commits to it, pointing the War Rig down a road and letting the pursuit carry the whole runtime, per IndieWire. It is closer to a reel of serial cliffhangers strung end to end than to a modern three-act action film, and that is the shape by design.

The record is not a fluke

Fury Road took six Academy Awards from ten nominations, the most wins of any film that night, for editing, production design, costumes, makeup and both sound categories, per Wikipedia. An action picture does not usually leave the ceremony with an armful, and this one did it on craft the Academy could see in every frame. The practical work is the reason it holds up as well on the record as it did on release.

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